"Gradation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the intrepid Ambrose. [61] He was descended from a noble family of Romans; his father had exercised the important office of Praetorian praefect of Gaul; and the son, after passing through the studies of a liberal education, attained, in the regular gradation of civil honors, the station of consular of Liguria, a province which included the Imperial residence of Milan. At the age of thirty-four, and before he had received the sacrament of baptism, Ambrose, to his own surprise, and to that of the world, was suddenly transformed from a governor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... we shall see presently, to want of a strong protecting government. One substantial fact has been established, owing to our having crossed over ten degrees of latitude in the centre of the continent, or from 5 deg. south to 5 deg. north latitude, which is this: There exists a regular gradation of fertility, surprisingly rich on the equator, but decreasing systematically from it; and the reason why this great fertile zone is confined to the equatorial regions, is the same as that which has constituted it the great focus of water or lake supply, whence issue the principal rivers of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and necessitated, now presented itself to me in such clearness that I could see nothing either in nature or in life in which it was not made manifest, although varying greatly according to its several manifestations, in complexity and in gradation. Just at this time those great discoveries of the French and English philosophers became generally known through which the great manifold external world was seen to form a comprehensive outer unity. And the labours ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... maintaining the pure tone. Practise gliding in the form of inflection, or slide, from one extreme of pitch to another. This may be given with variations, according to the ability of the student to control his voice with evenness and to maintain that pure smoothness of gradation in quality which permits no break or interruption in gliding from one pitch to another. These varieties of practice in slides and scales should be introduced with the practice of various elements of speech, as well as with the humming ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... Earthly eyes rested upon such scenes of splendor. Every color and gradation of their peculiar spectrum was present, in solid, liquid, and gas. The carefully-tended trees were all colors of the rainbow, as were the grasses and flowers along the walks. The fountains played streams of many and constantly-changing ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... kind of testudo, thus,—on the benches stood a body of armed men, united together by their shields, which joined above their heads; behind them was another row, who stooped, so as to be lower; a third rank bent lower still, so as to form a regular gradation; so that the last row of all, resting on their haunches, gave the whole formation the appearance of an arch. This kind of machine is employed in contests under the walls of towns, in order that while the blows of missiles and stones fall on the slippery descent they may ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... lines, gradation is to shade and color; it is their infinity—dividing them into an infinite number ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and individuals has a corresponding ethical gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not extinguishing but harmonizing the passions, and training them in virtue; in the timocracy and the timocratic man the constitution, whether of the State or of the individual, is based, first, upon courage, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship of board and bed, and the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... easy to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers; there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (seabini), and they might be distributed, in regular gradation, over the whole territory; but it would be one huge lie; for most frequently, in the majority of places, these magistracies were utterly powerless and themselves in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne, either to establish ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... brilliant colours of early autumn, and broad stripes of crimson, yellow, and green ran horizontally along the mountain sides, marking on a splendid chromatic scale the successive zones of vegetation as they rose in regular gradation from the level of the valley to the pure glittering snows of the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... shapeless and sombre. The prospect ended half-way, sharp and black, as in those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by Mr. Turner, whose Nature (Mr. Turner's) comes to a full stop as soon as Mr. Turner sees no further occasion for her, instead of melting by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into genuine distance, as Nature does in Claude and in Nature. To reverse the picture: standing at the door, you looked across forty feet of black, and the little corner seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the candle shone ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is to the principle that if you cannot rise above another by your own merit, you can at least so far equalise your condition by pulling him down to your own level, that this inordinate appetite for defamation must be ascribed. It is a state of ungenerous warfare, arising from there being no gradation, no scale, no discipline, if I may use the term, in society. Every one asserts his equality, and at the same time wishes to rise above his fellows; and society is in a state of perpetual and disgraceful ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... all along used the same word, and called the places we have spoken of—glens. A fine observer—the Editor of Gilpin's Forest Scenery—has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should be thus arranged,—strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm. In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large, majestic, gently flowing river, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of the soul. It is the exhileration of the palace; it is the joy of the humblest home; it sparkles and glows in the banquet hall; it is the inspiration of the church. Music inspires every gradation of humanity, from the orangoutang and the cane-sucking dude with the single eye ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Spirit of GOD[336]?" and does he not contrast his own sayings with the Divine sayings, ("not I but the LORD[337]"), clearly implying that his own were not Divine? and does he not say that he delivers certain things "by permission, and not of commandment[338]," whereby he seems to insinuate a gradation of authority in what he delivers?—No. Not one of these things does he do. He says, indeed, of a certain hint to married persons that he offers it "by way of advice to them not by way of precept:" but giving advice to men is a very different thing from receiving permission from GOD. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... case{1} and toggery{2} are out of repair, may make his entree and exit, without subjecting himself to the embarrassing gaze and scrutiny of his more fortunate fellow-citizens. Juniper Ward, which is directly opposite to Poverty Ward, may in a moral point of view be said to mark the natural gradation rom the one to the other. Whether these wards are so placed by the moral considerations of the ingenious citizens or not, we are at present unable to learn; but we have discovered that Juniper Ward is so called in consequence of a club, consisting of seven citizens, who bound themselves to meet ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Daun, we could observe, stood singing TE-DEUM, greatly at leisure, in his old Camp, 20th June, while Friedrich, from the first gray of morning, and diligently all day long, was withdrawing from the trenches of Prag,—Friedrich's people, self and goods getting folded out in the finest gradation, and with perfect success; no Daun to hinder him,—Daun leisurely doing TE-DEUM, forty miles off, helping on the WRONG side by that exertion! [Cogniazzo, ii. 367.]—"Poor Browne, he is dead of his wounds, in Prag yonder," writes Westphalen, in his Leitmeritz Journal, "news came ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... which the universe is composed, he will observe with astonishment that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from the most perfect creature to the most formless matter—from the most highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. He will recognize this gradation as the great work of Nature; and he will observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of movements, and in the successive ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... over by insensible gradation into the morbid automatism of chorea, and in yet lower levels of decay we see them in the aimless picking and plucking movements of the fingers of the sick. In idiots[8] arrest of higher powers often ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... but if I were as indifferent to my breakfast as a philosopher should be, I should be doubtful. As to the conversation at breakfast, I can recall some of it easily, some with an effort, some only with a large element of doubt, and some not at all. Thus there is a continual gradation in the degree of self-evidence of what I remember, and a corresponding gradation in the ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... edifices into a squalid district of factories and workshops and crowded by-ways. At Aston Church the young man alighted, and walked rapidly for five minutes, till he reached a row of small modern houses. Socially they represented a step or two upwards in the gradation which, at Birmingham, begins with the numbered court and culminates in the mansions ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... pleasant study, in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is the gradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of silentia noctis, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautological though) of the Virgilian tacitae per amica silentia lunae, to the recovery and intensifying ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... handkerchief and white apron. The young are generally pretty; the old, tanned and ugly; and the transition from youth to age seems instantaneous: labor and poverty have destroyed every intermediate gradation; but, whether young or old, they have all the same good-humored look, and appear generally industrious, though almost incessantly talking. Even on Sundays or feast-days, bonnets are seldom to be seen, but round their necks are suspended large silver or gilt ornaments, usually crosses, while ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... species, and retaining through all their variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there being only four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different sorts of Selenite, and almost every gradation between one sort ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... perfection prevails in the derived. The latter is indeed an image and reflection of the Original Essence, but the wider the circle of creations extends the less their share in the Original Essence. Hence the totality of being forms a gradation of concentric circles which finally lose themselves almost completely in non-being, in so far as in the last circle the force of the Original Essence is a vanishing one. Each lower stage of being is connected with the Original Essence only by means of the higher stages; that ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Secondly, from his natural endowments, not consisting in the exquisite delicacy of one individual sense—not merely combining memory with reflection—but possessing qualities of the mind that stagger us in the contemplation of them, and which we can alone account for in the gradation existing in that wonderful system which, by different links of one vast chain, extends from the first to the last of all things, until it forms a perfect whole on the wonderful confines of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the greatest in an other. Thus, the heaviest wood is less heavy than the lightest of the metals; and the least valuable of the metals is perhaps of more value than the choicest wood. (2.) The comparative degree may increase upon itself, and be repeated to show the gradation. Thus, a man may ascend into the air with a balloon, and rise higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, till he is out of sight. This is no uncommon form of expression, and the intension is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... about a two-fold good; first I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind to a state which would be a proper gradation between abject slavery and perfect liberty, and besides I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldiers. Men, who have the habit of subordination almost indelibly impressed on them, would have one very essential qualification of soldiers. I am ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... intensity of colouring in examples of this species, the thorax and legs being sometimes pale ferruginous; in the specimen described they are dark; every shade of gradation occurs ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... great reception-room, and very grand and very solemn they were. Mr Slope was down-stairs giving the last orders about the wine. He well understood that curates and country vicars with their belongings did not require so generous an article as the dignitaries of the close. There is a useful gradation in such things, and Marsala at 20s a dozen did very well for the exterior ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... nation. Amongst them are many respectable persons. The lower orders of the people have been taught, by restless visionaries, to consider the destinations of Providence, which had before, by an imperceptible gradation of social colouring, united the russet brown to the magisterial purple, as usurpations over those natural rights which have been impressed without illustration, and magnified by a mischievous mystery. In the fierce pursuit of these imaginary immunities, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... the primitive simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little Simiti had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as she now stood at the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... formations, while other species continually die out and disappear, so that the present condition of the organic world is clearly derived by a natural process of gradual extinction and creation of species from that of the latest geological periods. We may therefore safely infer a like gradation and natural sequence from ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is the source of so much danger, especially to the welfare and peace of Ireland. Lord John Russell would have formed his ministry on the basis of a complete free trade in corn, to be established at once, without gradation or delay. He would have accompanied that proposal with measures of relief to a considerable extent of the occupiers of land from the burdens to which they are subjected. But he will be little disposed to insist, as a member of parliament, on what may seem to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the Brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, v.173, etc. VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason alone countervails ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a gradation of Beauty must be observed, by which alone the full Beauty concentrated in the focus becomes visible; and from an exaggeration of particulars proceeds an equipoise of the whole. Here, then, the limited and characteristic finds its place; and theory at least should ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... himself, who themselves might judge all smaller matters, but all great and hard matters to be brought to Moses, Exod. xviii. 22, 26. And our Saviour seems to insinuate, that the Jews had their inferior courts for inferior causes, superior judicatories for greater, in that gradation of his, Matt. v. 22. Likewise they had lesser and greater ecclesiastical assemblies, (as after will appear.) Now, to what use are greater and lesser judicatories, civil or ecclesiastical, but that the lesser and lighter ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... ran diagonally across the room, and a little lamp was burning in the corner over the table, casting a patch of red light on the ikon of St. George the Victorious. From the ikon stretched on each side of the corner a row of cheap oleographs, which maintained a strict and careful gradation in the transition from the sacred to the profane. In the dim light of the candle end and the red ikon lamp the pictures looked like one continuous stripe, covered with blurs of black. When the tiled stove, trying to sing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... each system in gradation roll Alike essential to th' amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole must fall. Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky; Let ruling angels ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... not, of course, realise that as, very slowly, very gradually he began to understand the terms and conditions of his new life, so with the same gradation, his Friend was expressed in those terms. Slowly that great shadow filled the room, took on human shape, until at last it would be only thus that he would appear. But Henry would not realise the change, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... a beautiful ease of assurance. From his height he looks forth, takes in the effect with his sweeping vision, possesses himself of the gradation of its tone; then, stooping nearer, he seizes the detail that renders it. But the sense of the broad survey is first in his thought. When he reflects upon Becky's life in London and all that came of her attempt to establish herself there, he is soon assailed ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... most pathetic painting of her feelings and situation. It is a beautiful appeal to love, to honor, and to pity. Not till after his cold answer, does she burst into all the violence of rage, of contempt, and of despair. This gradation has often been remarked as a principal beauty. As some excuse for the coldness of AEneas which takes away so much of the interest of the poem, Virgil is careful to recoil continually to our attention, that he is acting under the impulse of the divinity. ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... mind, the universe is liquid, solid, and aeri- 511:24 form. Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas. Animals and mor- tals metaphorically present the gradation of 511:27 mortal thought, rising in the scale of intelligence, taking form in masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament 512:1 of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... wood carbonized to a certain degree, but retaining distinctly its woody texture. Dr. MacCulloch, On Rocks, p. 636., observes: "In its chemical properties, lignite holds a station intermediate between peat and coal; while among the varieties a gradation in this respect may be traced; the brown and more organised kinds approaching very near to peat, while the more compact kinds, such as jet, approximate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... development of the animal kingdom, the higher species coming in after the lower; and if every human being, instead of developing at once, according to the human type, is compelled to pass through this regular gradation of development, is it not apparent that the lower forms are absolutely necessary as a basis for the higher, and that the higher forms cannot arrive except by building up and giving additional development to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... old provinces, and his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he employed there was a very striking gradation ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... unpenetrated, the division is always distinct between the injected part and that which is not penetrated by the fluid flint. In this case, the flinty matter has proceeded a certain length, which is marked, and no farther; and, beyond this boundary, there is no partial impregnation, nor a gradation of the flintifying operation, as must have been the case if siliceous matter had been deposited from a solution. 2dly, The termination of the flinty impregnation has assumed such a form, precisely, as would naturally happen from a fluid flint ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... the workers, again, are of two classes, whose structure and functions are widely different. In some species they are wonderfully unlike each other, and constitute two well-defined forms of workers. In others, there is a gradation of individuals between the two extremes. The curious differences in structure and habits between these two classes form an interesting, but very difficult, study. It is one of the great peculiarities of the Sauba ant to possess three classes of workers. My investigations regarding ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... relation, I have drawn a brief description of the Newfoundland, with the commodities by sea or land already made, and such also as are in possibility and great likelihood to be made. Nevertheless the cards and plots that were drawn, with the due gradation of the harbours, bays, and capes, did perish with the Admiral: wherefore in the description following, I must omit the particulars ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... had not only entered voluntarily, but which he had set himself; he had played into the Prince's hands, and was frantic to see his adversary tranquilly winning the game. It was almost melancholy to observe the gradation of his tone from haughty indignation to dismal concession. In an elaborate letter which he addressed "to the particular states, bishops, councillors, and cities of the Netherlands," he protested as to the innocence of his intentions, and complained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their family-service—are apt to get so far down. The experienced professionals and early risers secure the best places and choice of rocks; and among the hundreds at work you can discern something like a physical gradation. At the next bridge the women look better, stronger; more young faces appear; and the further you follow the river-course towards the Jardin des Plantes, the more the appearance of the blanchisseuses ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... prevented any considerable development. The relation between marble and schist is very perfectly shown at an old quarry west of Leesburg. The marble occupies two beds in schist, and between the two rocks there is gradation of composition. In none of the western belts are the calcareous beds recrystallized into marbles, but all retain their original character of blue and dove-colored limestone. None of them, however, is of great thickness and none ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... of science and the visible order of being, we are led to the conception of an ascending series of existences rising in regular gradation from coarse to fine, from brutal to mental, from earthly composite to simply spiritual, and thus pointing up the rounds of life's ladder, through all nature, to the angelic ranks of heaven. Then, feeling his kinship and common vocation with supernal beings, man is ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... But if he is neither an idealist, nor a philistine, nor a pleasure lover, surely he is compounded of such elements, and does not escape their implications. He desires something most of all, even though his highest ideal be only an inference from the gradation of his immediate purposes. This highest ideal represents what he conceives to be the greatest worth or value attainable in the universe, and its adoption is based upon the largest generalization that he can ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... sufficient coolness to pause for metaphor, nor has metaphor ardor enough to keep pace with passion."—Nothing can be less true. Metaphoric strength of expression will burst even from vulgar and illiterate minds when they are agitated. It is a natural effort of roused sensibility in every gradation, from unlettered simplicity to the highest refinement. Passion has no occasion to pause for metaphors, they rush upon the mind which it has heated. Similies, it is true, are not natural to strong emotion. They are the result of spirits that are calm, and at ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... this variety of occupations may appear very strange, but among the unsettled and ambitious population of the United States, men at the age of fifty have been, or at least have tried to be, everything, not in gradation, from the lowest up to the highest, but just as it may happen—doctor yesterday and waiter to-day—the Yankee philosopher will to-morrow run for a seat in legislature; if he fails, he may turn a Methodist preacher, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the Fire, to carry up the more Fixt ones, as I have often Try'd in Dulcify'd Colcothar, Sublim'd by Sal Armoniack Blended with it) are carried Up together, but may afterwards be Separated by other Degrees of Fire, whose orderly Gradation allowes the Disparity of their Volatileness to Discover it self. Besides, if Differing Bodies United into one Mass be both sufficiently Fixt, the Fire finding no Parts Volatile enough to be Expell'd or carried ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... apprentices—the better sort at least—obtained full recognition as practitioners; and at the close of the fourteenth century their reputation had become so considerable that the great apprentices had formed themselves into a distinct order, in which they stood next to serjeants-at-law, the gradation being as follows: ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... India or not, capable of being appointed to seats in the respective councils; empowered the governors of presidencies to nominate temporary successors to members of council who might die or vacate their office; altered a clause in the former bill, which compelled the company's servants to rise by gradation; repealed another, which required from them a disclosure of their property, on oath; and made several changes in the court of judicature and mode of trial for crimes and misdemeanors in India. This bill was strongly opposed by Fox and Burke, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seat in the military councils, and his office was very lucrative. To his charge was intrusted the eagle of the legion. [Footnote: Liv. xxv. 5; Caes. B.C., vi. 6.] As the centurion could rise from the ranks, and rose by regular gradation through the different maniples of the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, there was great inducement held out to the soldiers. In the Roman legion it would seem that there was a regular gradation of rank although there were but few distinct offices. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... almost a citizen; and his frankness, conciliatory disposition, and elevated demeanour, an estimable one. The expressions of regret as general as he was known, and not uttered by friends and acquaintance only, but by every gradation of class, not only by grown persons, but young children, are the test of his worth. Such too is the only eulogium worthy of the good and brave, and the citizens of Quebec have, with solemn emotions, pronounced ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... thought of the ample spaces of his Museum where the whole great scheme is made manifest to the eye, the structure of man, then the slow gradation downward, the immense series of flowers and plants counterfeited in glass continuing the line unbroken, down to the ultimate lichen, all but part and parcel of the ledge to which ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... make this a very wild and very romantic retreat? On the right bank of the Rhine which stretches out under our eyes, it is another thing. Picture to yourself a landscape of infinite sweetness, a great cultivated plain, which rises by imperceptible gradation to the base of a distant chain of mountains, the undulating outlines of which are traced upon the sky in ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... of which man is cognizant, escape the senses in gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in spite of this, there ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... utmost that can be said for him was that he wanted that particular girl alone. I think I saw then the obscure beginning, the seed germinating in the soil of an unconscious need, the first shoot of that tree bearing now for a mature mankind the flower and the fruit, the infinite gradation in shades and in flavour of our discriminating love. He was a child. He was as frank as a child too. He was hungry for the girl, terribly hungry, as he had been terribly hungry ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... universal admitted by all{65}. Gladiolus, Crinum, Calceolaria{66} must be species if there be such a thing. Races of dogs and oxen: but certainly very general; indeed a gradation of sterility most perfect{67} very general. Some nearest species will not cross (crocus, some heath ), some genera cross readily (fowls{68} and grouse, peacock &c.). Hybrids no ways monstrous quite perfect except secretions{69} hence even the mule has bred,—character ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... need not have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... is characterized by the culmination of trends in the region studied to paler upper parts, longer tail, longer ear, and longer, relatively narrower rostrum—characters that appear at least partly independent of each other as concerns gradation toward the smaller, darker-colored populations to the northward. The latter, while exhibiting some differences in color (slightly paler westwardly) and length of tail (shorter northwardly), stand more or less as a unit in contrast to the mice from ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... are exhibited by many species when crossed with other species. On the other hand, not only is it not proved that all species give rise to hybrids infertile inter se, but there is much reason to believe that, in crossing, species exhibit every gradation from perfect sterility to ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... climate, by which the lot, as well as the national character, of the northern Asiatic may be deemed inferior to that of Europeans, who lie under the same parallels, a similar gradation of temperament and spirit, however, has been observed, in following the meridian on either tract; and the southern Tartar has over the Tonguses and the Sanmoiede the same pre-eminence, that certain nations ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... painting would but ill assist, for one of the most striking features is the great and sudden depth which you look down, the effect of which we know the pencil cannot at all convey. The side on which we stand, however, though steep, is not absolutely precipitous; on the contrary, the gradation of crag and projection, by which it descends to the bottom, is one of the finest things in the view. Close on our right a lofty peak presents its rocky face to the valley, to which it bears down in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... of his movements was sometimes arrested by a more formidable barrier, either naturally existing in the pursuit he had undertaken, or created by his own impetuosity, he seldom failed to succeed either in knocking it down or cutting his way through it. He had little idea of gradation: he saw no interval between the first step and the last, but pounced upon his object with the impetus of a mountain cataract. This rapidity of movement, indeed, subjected him to some disasters which cooler spirits ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... regards all ministers in conclave as on the same level in rank and function, and which is the prevailing form of Church government in Scotland; inherited from Geneva, as also prevailing extensively in the United States of America. The government is administered by a gradation of courts, called "Kirk-Sessions," of office-bearers in connection with a particular congregation; "Presbyteries," in connection with a small district; "Synods," in connection with a larger; and finally a General Assembly or a Synod ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and alike when the gun is under pressure. The Parrott and Whitworth cannon are constructed on this principle, and there has been some practice in winding tubes with square steel wire to secure the most uniform gradation of tension at the least cost. There is some difficulty as yet in fastening the wire and giving the gun proper longitudinal strength. Mr. Wiard, of New York, makes an ingenious argument to show that large cannon burst ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... colonial revenue has been assumed merely by way of exemplification, and that it is a fiction, the realization of which is beyond the extreme verge of possibility: a fiction which never has been and never can be verified. In this colony as in every other community, there is a regular gradation of property, and perhaps there is no country on the face of the earth, except Russia, where it is so partially distributed. If then I have reconciled the probability of the wretched condition of the colonists, with the assumption of an equality of wealth, when there is, in fact, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... be their own women after. He exasperates men's enormities in public view, and tells them their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still he might find more occasions to work on. He is the general corrupter of spirits yet untainted, inducing them by gradation to much lascivious depravity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices as otherwise they had haply ne'er heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed what he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... received from their subjects the respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were greatly strengthened by the institution of taboo, which lent the sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648] Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The resulting political constitution has been compared to the old feudal system ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... disadvantage of having no intrinsic spatial character; it, therefore, forms no part of the properly abstracted external world, and the pleasures of the ear cannot become, in the literal sense, qualities of things. But there is in sounds such an exquisite and continuous gradation in pitch, and such a measurable relation in length, that an object almost as complex and describable as the visible one can be built out of them. What gives spatial forms their value in description of the environment is the ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... we examine this belt, and compare the different parts of it with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact. The peoples inhabiting it grow steadily more personal as we go west. So unmistakable is this gradation of spirit, that one is tempted to ascribe it to cosmic rather than to human causes. It is as marked as the change in color of the human complexion observable along any meridian, which ranges from black at the equator to blonde toward ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... obeyed, in some ages and countries than in others; and, like them, are susceptible of great variety in their application, from the character and usages of nations. I shall consider these principles in the gradation of those which are necessary to any tolerable intercourse between nations; those which are essential to all well-regulated and mutually advantageous intercourse; and those which are highly conducive to the preservation of a mild and friendly intercourse ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... complete in me— In me is matter's last gradation lost, And the next step is spirit—Deity! I can command the lightning, and am dust! A monarch and a slave—a worm, a god! Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously Constructed and conceived? unknown! this clod Lives surely through some higher energy; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... petiole; but instead of being abruptly separated from them (as is usual with the pulvinus in most plants), they graduate into the larger cells of the petiole. On the other hand, S. napaea, according to Batalin, does not possess a pulvinus; and he informs us that a gradation may be traced in the several species of the genus between these two states of the petiole. Sida rhombifolia presents another peculiarity, of which we have seen no other instance with leaves that sleep: for those on very young plants, though they rise somewhat in the evening, do not ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... who, after ruining himself and family at the gambling table, ran away from them, and was not since heard of. His wife being left to herself, and having probably been tainted by his evil example, by an easy gradation became first embarrassed, then a prostitute, then a thief, and on the occasion above mentioned exhibited one of the most distressing spectacles of vice and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... them, which seemed reserved for her. As there are degrees of hardness in the hardest metal, and shades of colour in black itself, so, even in the asperity of Mrs Clennam's demeanour towards all the rest of humanity and towards Little Dorrit, there was a fine gradation. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... holding it. The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a decent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one. The morals of Fifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is it possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of relative economic standing. It is undoubtedly true that folks and families often have their moral stamina weakened and their personalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is an open question whether more folks and families ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the folds. For directed translatory movements cannot be transmitted through a fluid, pressure in which is necessarily hydrostatic, and must be exerted equally in every direction. And this applies, not only to a fluid, but to a body which will yield viscously to an impressed force. There will be a gradation, according as viscosity gives place to rigidity, between the states in which the applied force resolves itself into a purely hydrostatic pressure, and in which it is transmitted through the material as a directed thrust. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... is made up of divisions marked out in gold, and filled either with coloured enamels or pieces of polished stone. The general effect is one of elegance, refinement, and harmony, the three principal elements of the design becoming enlarged from the top downwards in a deftly adjusted gradation. The dead-gold of the cartouche in the upper centre is set off below by the brightly variegated and slightly undulating band of colours of the sparrow-hawk, while the urseus and vulture, associated together ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... distinguished in the Koran. The order adopted with an extremely fine tact by the synoptics, supposes an analogous progress. If Matthew be attentively read, we shall find in the distribution of the discourses, a gradation perfectly analogous to that which we have just indicated. The reserved turns of expression of which we make use in unfolding the progress of the ideas of Jesus will also be observed. The reader may, if he likes, see in the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... side was a gradation of buildings, from the two-story brick grocery on the west corner to the grandest of the stone mansions on the east. With the exception of two or three houses built in the early history of the block, and occupied by obstinate old proprietors, it presented such a regularly ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... that any alteration for the better can be made, either in the rate of salaries now allowed or in the rank and gradation of our diplomatic agents, or both, the present would be a fit occasion for a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... grade, gradual, graduate, degrade, digress, Congress, aggressive, progressive, degree; (2) gradation, Centigrade, ingress, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of some thousand volumes, filled with books of all kinds, ancient and modern, valuable and valueless. It is open to the 150 first in the school on payment of eighteen shillings per annum, and on their refusal the option of becoming subscribers descends to the next in gradation. The list, however, is never full. The money collected goes to the support of a librarian, and to buy pens, ink, and paper, and the surplus (necessarily small) to the purchase of books. The basis of the library is the set of Delphin classics, presented by George I. The late head master (now provost) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... to solids, fluids, gases, atmospheric and etheric motions, vary in different individuals to such a wide extent that the average wool-sorter leaves many an artist behind in his perception of colour-shades. The same odour is perceptible by one person and unrecognisable by another. In the gradation of sound, too, the same differences of perception will be commonly noticed. But quite apart from the scale or range of perception, the quality of a sense-impression is found to vary with different persons. By this we mean that the same body will affect different persons in dissimilar ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... working power. As soon as such experiments are put into the service of economic life, they will have to be carried on with much more accurate adjustment to the special conditions, with subtler gradation of the stimuli, and especially with careful study of individual factors. But at first it seems more in the interest of the practical task that the extremely complicated problem of the influence of alcohol be followed up by purely ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such. The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation from one to the other means that with the "mothers" (as Mephistopheles pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no boundaries between a "here" and a "there," an "above" and a "below," and for this reason Mephistopheles can say ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... recitation of the Psalter, and to bring about this weekly recitation and the restoration of the Sunday Office a mere rearrangement of the Psalms was quite insufficient, and a rearrangement of the gradation of feasts of concurrence ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... the brilliant audience. The courtliness of his manner disarmed hostility; but when he sat down to the piano, ran his fingers over the keys, and sang a few bars, the exquisite voice found its way to every heart. With every moment his voice became more powerful. Each gradation of emotion was rendered with an ease, an art, an expression, that made every heartstring vibrate. Then he suddenly stopped, bowed, and retired. The house rang with bravos. The dress-circle forgot its reticence and joined in the tumult of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... regiments, and the name "Agitators" or "Adjutators" had been given to these deputies. Very soon the organization was so perfect that every troop or company had its two Agitators, every regiment its distinct Agitatorship composed of the Agitators of the several troops or companies, and so by gradation upwards to general meetings of the Agitators of the whole Army and special meetings of Committees for maturing business more privately. Too obvious a connexion between this association and the higher army-officers was inconvenient; but it was useful to have connecting links in officers of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... polished-looking painting on smooth cardboard, but a sketch—indefinite at the outer edges of the whole subject—on water-colour paper of moderate roughness. The throat and part of the cup of the flower stood out from some shadow at the roots of a plant beyond; a shadow of infinite gradation, and quite without the blackness common to patches of shade as seen by untrained eyes. From the level of my great-grandfather's view, as he lay in the grass, the border looked a mere strip; close behind it was a hedge ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the other subsidiary compartments must be kept subordinate to it, and must lead up to it in such a manner that the spectator shall be led by a natural gradation from the subsidiary compartments up to the main one, which is the center and raison d'etre of the whole—everything in the lines of the plan should point to that. This is the great crux in the planning of complicated public buildings. A visitor to such a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... balance till, say, 35 lbs. is attained. If the fixed balance shows 7 lbs. on what is meant to be a 5 to 1 ratio, the setting of R relatively to P and Q is correct. If, however, there is a serious discrepancy, it would be worth while making tests with a very strong balance, and establishing a corrected gradation on a paper dial pasted to ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... although at some distance, Giorgione da Castelfranco, who obtained a beautiful gradation of colour in his pictures, and gave a sublime movement to his works by means of a certain darkness of shadow, very well conceived; and not inferior to him in giving force, relief, sweetness, and grace to his pictures, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... earth by advancing through it, another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to divide water which advances against it. And again, the buttress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from the plowshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... were very distinct rays proceeding from the sun, but they were shorter than on the evening of the 3d. These are caused by the tops of the great cumuli of the storm, when sunk below the horizon, intercepting the sun's rays, which still shine on the upper atmosphere. The gradation was very marked, and accorded with the different distances of the central vortex on the 3d and 4th—although, on the 4th, the nearest distance must have been over four hundred miles to the southern ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... principles we have discussed has its corollary, which adds to the resources of the decorative artist. These are as follows:—To Repetition belongs harmony, or consonance; to Alternation, contrast; to Symmetry, radiation; to Progression, gradation; to balanced ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... and stable grandeur. Accordingly the contemplation of virtue is attended with repose. A lovely quality, if its loveliness be clearly perceived, fastens the mind with absolute sovereignty upon itself; permitting or inciting it to pass, by smooth gradation or gentle transition, to some other kindred quality. Thus a perfect image of meekness (I refer to an instance before given) when looked at by a tender mind in its happiest mood, might easily lead on to thoughts of magnanimity; for assuredly there is nothing incongruous ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... completed,—a 'Pieta;' showing that his hand owned the weight of years,[16] but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, Titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... we can rest upon, such a passage would be to the soul instant annihilation; the shock would be too great for even its enlarged susceptibilities. It must become gradually accustomed to the new sights and sounds, and so pass slowly up from one stage of perception and knowledge to another in regular gradation, to the climax of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
